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Although this is the final issue of Volume Two, I personally found the previous issue to be a more worthy and fitting finale to the Amazon’s first Post Crisis volume of adventures. In Issue 225 Greg Rucka managed to encapsulate everything Diana is, was and will be. Issue 226 however feels very much like padding and filler material, bridging an unwanted gap in publishing schedules.
It would be three months before the first issue of Volume Three would go on sale in order to give the new creative team time to get up to speed. Why DC felt the need to “tack on” this final issue is unknown, apart from perhaps making it tie in more seamlessly with events in “Infinite Crisis” #5 published during the same month. In “Infinite Crisis”, Wonder Woman gets a reasonable amount of panel time devoted to her and we see a hint of her new future direction. As the world crumbles around our heroes with the return of “Earth Two”, Wonder Woman gets to meet her pre-crisis self. This “Diana Prince” tells our Diana that “You’ve been a Princess, a Goddess, an Ambassador and a Warrior…but the one thing you haven’t been for a very long time is human.” What could she be getting at? A secret identity perhaps, so Diana can walk among the mortals of Patriarch’s World as one of them? All would be revealed soon enough…
Whether Rucka intended it for creative reasons, or whether it was a genuine mistake, the continuity of the various “flashbacks” in this issue is out of order. According to the issue, Diana had opened the Themyscircan Embassy six years ago after having been killed by Neron and resurrected as a Goddess. It then states that five years ago (i.e. one year later), Diana had lost her title of Wonder Woman to Artemis. These events actually occurred in reverse order and seems a very obvious and cumbersome continuity error – at least to fans who know Diana’s history inside out!!!
Still, regardless of these “niggles” with the story line, some fans felt that seeing as this was, at least officially, the final ever issue of “Wonder Woman”, the limelight should have been all Diana’s – but once again she was forced to share what should be her “swan song” with Superman. Why could Diana not stand alone to take her final bow? Why indeed.
